More and more, it seems that educational resources support two core courses: English Language Arts and Mathematics. In my opinion, this is a dangerous trend in education, today. At a time when students must prepare to live within a global society, education curriculum and instructional resources are ignoring other critical subjects. As a result, the education […]

Rather than comment once again on the dramatic deficiencies of the deform movement, allow me to inform the reader on what educators actually do. I’m helping to rewrite a chapter in an elementary social studies methods textbook and here’s a brief draft excerpt: Give students evidence, one clue at a time. Ask them to consider […]

Between this panel, where I serve as a discussant, and our live broadcast of At the Chalk Face, I think the overall theme here is agitation, hoping I shame my colleagues into action. There is no excuse for self-identified democratic and social justice scholars to be silent any longer with what is happening to our […]

Tim and I are making our annual pilgrimage to the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) conference, this year in Seattle. For us, most of the action happens at the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA), which is the “higher ed” portion of the entire event. That’s where scholars of social studies, with graduate student groupies […]

I’m discussing the Olympic Games in second grade. I asked the kids what they knew about the United States before assigning them other countries. Here’s a sample of what I heard: The United States is fun Denny’s Benning Road (presumably the student’s address) I ask, “What’s the capital of the United States?” Texas Mexico Mind […]

I know I tweeted this 100 times while doing the show, but episode 38 is up for a listen. Check it out. And, mark your calendars for next Friday the 16th at 4PM for episode 39. I haven’t updated iTunes in a while, I have to get on that. Maybe this weekend.

Education week is reporting on the continued decline of the social studies in k-12. Perhaps tell me something I don’t know. To boot, I read that while attending the national conference for the discipline. All these great ideas floating around and there is basically no educational infrastructure with which to teach them. For instance, social […]

Education Week reports that an “exemplary” school in Dallas, likely due to test scores, did not teach any other subjects besides math and reading. They even manufactured grades to make it seem to parents that they were doing at least some teaching. You know, I have to be honest, as an elementary teacher, a lot […]

The American Enterprise Institute put out a series of ten papers on the status of civics education, advocating that it be on par with literacy and math. Looks like there was a recent even as well in DC. As a social studies person, I recognize some names, Keith Barton, Joseph Kahne. That’s it I think. […]

I’m off the San Diego for a family trip. Let’s leave it at that. I can’t say how much I’ll be able to contribute over the next week. Maybe I need a break. There’s so much coming out now with the SOS March, it’s hard to keep up. While sitting at gate A3 in the […]

Hey, maybe this is now a way in for social studies, especially elementary schools. You know, because kids apparently don’t know d*ck about history, or even geography and economics, the list could go on with what has ignored over the years as a result of testing in reading and math. More than likely, the discipline […]

I’ll be out of commission for the next couple of days to attend a beach wedding. So, in the meantime, enjoy my new piece up at Huffington Post about problems in the social studies. Oh, and take a look at my buddy Tim Slekar’s piece about the education cuts in Pennsylvania. Quite the drama. See […]

There’s so much that’s funny about this piece in Mother Jones about a Tea Party backed curriculum on the Constitutionn, especially this: Very little of the eight-hour lesson I sat through included a discussion of how the Constitution affects average people, or how it’s been changed over time to reflect the nation’s progress—such as the […]